23 quotes about tyrants follow in order of popularity. Be sure to bookmark and share your favorites!

Children today are tyrants. They contradict their parents, gobble their food, and tyrannize their teachers.

Socrates

Rebellion to tyrants is obedience to God.

Thomas Jefferson

The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.

Thomas Jefferson

The tree of Liberty needs to be watered from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.

Thomas Jefferson

Pity is the virtue of the law, and none but tyrants use it cruelly.

William Shakespeare

When I despair, I remember that all through history the ways of truth and love have always won. There have been tyrants, and murderers, and for a time they can seem invincible, but in the end they always fall. Think of it--always.

Mahatma Gandhi

A test of a people is how it behaves toward the old. It is easy to love children. Even tyrants and dictators make a point of being fond of children. But the affection and care for the old, the incurable, the helpless are the true gold mines of a culture.

Abraham J. Heschel

Necessity is the argument of tyrants, it is the creed of slaves.

William Pitt The Younger

Then I despair... I remember that all through history, the way of truth and love has always won. There have been murderers and tyrants, and for a time they can seem invincible. But in the end they always fall. Think of it always.

Andre Mairaux

He helped expose the need for more stringent controls on an arms trade that all too often leads to weapons ending up in the hands of tyrants and human rights abusers.

Mike Blakemore

If men will not be governed by God, they will be ruled by tyrants.

William Penn

Necessity is the plea for every infringement of human freedom. It is the argument of tyrants; it is the creed of slaves.

William Pitt

Of all the tyrants the world affords, our own affections are the fiercest lords.

John Sterling

Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they are resisted with either words or blows, or both. The limits of tyrants are prescribed by the endurance of those whom they oppress.

Frederick Douglass

He's a scholar and somewhat of an academic, and has studied our history and America's place in the world, in history, and believes that all the progress of the last century, or a goodly portion of it -- eradication of tyrants and communism and fascism and Hitlerism -- was a direct result of the strength of the United States of America and their willingness to use their strength for good.

Mary Matalin

Do not put such unlimited power into the hands of husbands. Remember all men would be tyrants if they could.

Abigail Adams

If the newspapers are useful in overthrowing tyrants, it is only to establish a tyranny of their own.

James Fenimore Cooper

No dictator, no invader, can hold an imprisoned population by force of arms forever. There is no greater power in the universe than the need for freedom. Against that power, governments and tyrants and armies cannot stand.

J. Michael Straczynski

With reasonable men, I will reason; with humane men I will plead; but to tyrants I will give no quarter, nor waste arguments where they will certainly be lost.

William Lloyd Garrison

Let tyrants shake their iron rod.

William Billings

DESTINY, n. A tyrant's authority for crime and fool's excuse for failure.

Ambrose Bierce

Lycurgus, Numa, Moses, Jesus Christ, Mohammed, all these great rogues, all these great thought-tyrants, knew how to associate the divinities they fabricated with their own boundless ambition.

Marquis De Sade

If you want a war, nourish a doctrine. Doctrines are the most frightful tyrants to which men are ever subject, because doctrines get inside a man's reason and betray him against himself. Civilized men have done their fiercest fighting for doctrines.

William Graham Sumner